


House Rules

by blacklid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:07:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blacklid/pseuds/blacklid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's reflections while driving to Palo Alto.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House Rules

**Author's Note:**

> Just before 1.01, _The Pilot_.  
>  **Prompt:** Dean: "You wanna drive for a while?" Sam: "In your whole life you never once asked me that." for spnquotefic.livejournal.com.

Dean learned to drive sitting on phone books with two boxes tied to the bottoms of his shoes. He was nine, going on ten. He was the New Kid lots of times that year, but he was always the kid whose Dad had the cool car that he knew how to drive.

It would take two more years to convince Dad that he was old enough for his own gun. Dad was patient like that, when it counted. When it wasn't in his pocket, it was under the passenger side of the bench, wrapped in one of dad's old flannels.

Sam learned to drive when he was nine, too. Sam got a gun the same year. It's not like it was a gun he was allowed to call his own, but he did get to keep it. Sam's got stashed in the glove compartment.

Dean tried not to be jealous.

He was jealous anyway.

Dad said it was because Sam had bad dreams sometimes. But everybody has bad dreams sometimes. Dean had bad dreams, too. Sometimes they came true... not that he ever talked about them. Once, he was able to say something in time to keep one from coming true: that time in Minnesota when Dad had to get them early from summer camp because of the water wraith. It wasn't the norm. Usually telling the truth got Dad in trouble.

Sam's disadvantage was something else, something that probably needed a gun to protect it. Sam couldn't keep a secret.

If Sam had a bad day, you knew it. If he thought his classes were dumb, you knew it. If a girl he liked at school liked someone else, you didn't know it but he didn't have to say it, either. If he had a bad dream, he wouldn't be able to sleep until Dean told him a story about things he remembered and stuff he knew. Most of Dean's stories somehow involved their car as a Transformer. The only thing it didn't have was a never-ending supply of gas.

If Sam was hungry, the cooler in the trunk was a walk-in smörgåsbord. If Sam was tired, the back seat was so much better than a stinky, lumpy motel mattress. Grab the jug and the pan from the floorboard and you had a sink.

It didn't have any privacy.

Who needed privacy when your best girl could take you anywhere you wanted to go?

When Dad started having dreams again, Sam left. Dean didn't hear about those dreams first hand. He read them in the journal. Dad never admitted it, but they all had something in common besides their jobs. Dean knew why Dad never talked about them.

Dean was twenty-three and still afraid of bad dreams because every time one happened, it meant someone he loved was gonna be leaving soon, maybe for good.

The older he got, the less it mattered what kind of dream it was.

Dreams may have driven them all apart, but wheels always drove them back together. All you had to do was drive.


End file.
